Coupons serve as an effective sales promotion tool in the shopping world. They have long been distributed by manufacturers for marketing their products and by retail stores for attracting consumers to their stores. A coupon can be used for managing inventory, attracting new buyers, increasing market share for a particular product, rewarding customer loyalty, matching competitor's coupon campaign etc. For decades, advertisers have issued or published printed coupons that can be taken to a redemption center, such as a retail store, and redeemed for some value or as a discount towards purchase of certain item.
The evolution of online shopping over the Internet has led to extension of the concept of coupons for use in electronic commerce. Such coupons, used for e-commerce transactions, are known as electronic coupons (e-coupons). Electronic coupons are similar in purpose and operation to traditional coupons. A typical electronic coupon may contain various details such as a coupon serial number, expiry date, product information, benefit description etc. The benefit description could be discount offered on a particular product purchased, or any other special offer.
Electronic coupons can be distributed in a variety of ways. Two such techniques are distribution through banner advertisements and distribution through e-mail. Once an electronic coupon has been offered to the user (by displaying a banner or through e-mail), the user has the option of either ignoring it, or accepting it for purchases.
In case of distributing electronic coupons through e-mail, a user (usually an online shopper) is sent an email containing a specific code that can be used to redeem discount on items in an e-commerce site. The code could be in the form of a hyperlink or plain text. The user can accept the coupon by inputting the code at the site of the manufacturer/retailer, in case of plain text. In case of hyperlink, the user can accept the coupon by simply clicking the hyperlink.
Banner advertisements are also used to offer electronic coupons. A banner advertisement is a graphic or image used in web pages for advertising on the Internet. Details regarding discount on certain items are displayed on the banner advertisements. The user can accept a coupon by clicking on the banner.
Once the user has accepted electronic coupons, he/she can use them for purchasing articles on an e-commerce site. The user can go to the appropriate e-commerce site, which sells the relevant articles (for which the coupon is offered). During or at the end of the transaction, the user can provide appropriate coupon details (such as coupon ID) to get the discount or free gift. The website then offers the discount/free gift, after verifying the coupon code and the applicability conditions.
Problems arise when a user has accepted a number of such coupons. The user has to keep track of codes and applicability conditions of the electronic coupons he/she has accepted. Further, suitable coupon details need to be provided on redemption of a coupon. This can be cumbersome for users, especially in the case of large number of electronic coupons.
To alleviate the problems associated with handling large number of electronic coupons, electronic coupon wallets have been proposed. One such electronic coupon wallet is described in the reference “Sales Promotions on the Internet”, M. Kumar, A. Rangachari, A. Jhingran and R. Mohan, Third USENIX workshop on electronic Commerce, Boston, 31 Aug-3 Sept. 1998. The wallet makes the handling and use of electronic coupons easier by allowing storing and viewing the accepted coupons associated with a user. Also, the wallet automatically determines the applicable coupons from a shopper's set of coupons, when a user visits the relevant site. Applicable coupons refer to those electronic coupons, which can be used for a given product or category or for the entire shopping cart of the user.
Electronic coupon wallets are stored either by the issuer or by a third party service provider. To use these wallets, a registration of users might be necessary. The registration process includes asking the user his/her name, login id, password, contact details etc. The registration makes it easy for the system to uniquely identify the users and thus preserve coupon and wallet details across sessions. The wallet functionality is implemented by associating the selected electronic coupons with the user's id. This facilitates electronic coupons accessed in one browsing session to be remembered and maintained in future sessions.
In case of unregistered users visiting an e-commerce site, it is difficult to uniquely identify or track users. This makes it difficult to offer electronic coupon wallets to unregistered users. Some sites offer electronic coupon wallets to unregistered users also, by assigning a temporary ID to them during a session. However, the ID and the associated coupons get purged once the shopper ends the session. Thus, the electronic coupons earned during one session cannot be retained for use in future browsing sessions. In other words, unregistered users visiting the website again will not be able to access their earlier wallet and corresponding coupons. This may result in unsatisfactory user experience and may, therefore, prevent users from accepting electronic coupons in future.
Since a large percentage of users accessing an e-commerce site are unregistered users, providing good user experience to unregistered users is important. The user may not like to register due to many reasons like privacy concerns, amount of effort involved in registering etc. However, from a business point of view, providing good user experience to unregistered users can lead to repeat visits and more visitors to the e-commerce site. This can significantly increase the popularity and revenues of manufacturers/retailers.
Various methods are proposed in the existing art that offer and manage electronic coupons. Many e-commerce sites such as http://www.amazon.com offer electronic coupons. Some of these restrict the e-coupon facility to registered users, while others also offer it to unregistered users. Some sites like http://www.theeducationcenter.com/cgi-bin/tec/pagejsp?NAME=Help_My_Coupons also offer electronic coupon wallets to registered users. However, none of the websites mentioned above have mechanisms to maintain electronic coupon wallets across different sessions for unregistered users.
One major problem that web sites face, while preserving electronic coupons and wallets across sessions for unregistered users, relates to identifying unregistered users uniquely. There exist methods that could be used to identify or track unregistered users across sessions. A common technique used for preserving sessions is through the use of cookies. A cookie is information that a website puts on the user's computer so that it can remember details about a user when the user revisits the website. In case of electronic coupons, cookies can be used to store details about the user and coupons. Thus when the user revisits the website, the web server can identify the user and provide him/her with the earlier electronic coupon wallet. However, this technique is specific to the user machine. Since the cookie is stored locally on the user's computer, the user won't be able to access his/her wallet from another PC. Also, in case of multiple users sharing the same PC, another user may access electronic coupons accepted by one user. Further, access to the wallet and coupons are not possible if the cookies are disabled or deleted from the user machine.
Some websites (like www.nieropwebconsult.nl/asp_session_manager.htm? page=specs) offer reentrant sessions (re-establishing an earlier user's session) by e-mail. If a user wants to continue a current browsing session in future, he/she is asked for his/her e-mail address. The system then sends an e-mail containing a session ID corresponding to the current session. When the user revisits the site, his/her earlier session is restored. Although the system can be used to preserve sessions of electronic coupon wallets also, it has certain drawbacks. The entire data regarding the session is stored on the server. This occupies a lot of space on the server. Also, since the entire session is saved, details pertaining to the user are also stored thereby developing privacy and security concerns to the user.
In the light of above discussion, there is a need for a system and method for enabling users to manage electronic coupons across multiple browsing sessions, without the user having to register onto the website offering the electronic coupons.